BY BRYAN DAVIS
LAST Saturday, while watching the Indian Premier League (IPL) game between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Punjab Kings, I was happy to see Jason Holder emerge Player of the Match.
One has to perform a cut above the rest to attract that accolade. The former West Indies team captain picked up three wickets for 19 runs in his four overs and scored an exhilarating 47 not out.
That honour usually goes to a member of the winning team, for obvious reasons; this time, however, Holder’s team SH, lost the game. Nonetheless, the judges could not deny the Barbadian’s contribution.
One only had to witness the manner in which he approached his game, the enthusiasm he generated in all its departments, to appreciate the quality of the player and his strength of purpose.
He ought to have been in the 15 players chosen to represent WI in the forthcoming World Cup. The indignity handed down to him as one of the four travelling reserves, was unjustified.
In the same breath, why should Darren Bravo and Sheldon Cottrell make the reserve list? Those places should have gone to promising players who could benefit from the experience and return after the tournament with improved knowledge to help build up WI cricket.
Selectors of West Indies teams ought to recognise that the teams they have been delegated to choose are not to represent them, the selectors, but the entire cricketing region of the West Indies. Therefore, the job carries a huge responsibility.
While selectors enjoy a certain degree of latitude, it is not a licence to do whatever one feels, without restraint. Although free from the interference of administrative authority, integrity is required – it is an absolute necessity.
Although one does not have to explain one’s selections (from a cricket point of view), as those are confidential, and rightly so, when selections are made that are devoid of common sense and do not concern ability or talent but fitness, then we want to know what’s wrong with these players. When someone is injured during a game or before it, and it’s reported that Joe Blokes has a hamstring strain, or a pulled muscle, or a throat infection, why is it so difficult now to let us know how and why these cricketers failed fitness tests and others passed – plus, why others were exempted?
In the future, any player can be chosen to represent WI and the people can be told he had a medical exemption from a fitness test. Isn’t that seriously risky ground on which we tread? That being so, who can question future selectors?
Then it is no longer a choice of the best side to win a tournament, but seems suspiciously like a preference for reasons apart from cricket. And since one does not want to accuse anyone of violating their good offices through friendship and currying favour, yet some sort of an explanation is necessary.
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The public needs to know why some cricketers were medically exempted f
